Giuliani Says Trump Would Not Have to Comply With Mueller Subpoena

It was one of a several startling admissions by Mr. Giuliani, during his first extended television appearance since Mr. Trump criticized him last week for not having his “facts straight” about payments made to a pornographic film actress, Stephanie Clifford. Mr. Giuliani said it was possible that Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, had made additional payments to other women on the president’s behalf.

“I have no knowledge of that,” Mr. Giuliani said when asked about other payments, “but I would think if it was necessary, yes.”

If Mr. Trump were to invoke the Fifth Amendment, he would undercut his longstanding claim that he has nothing to hide about his campaign’s ties to Russia. During the presidential campaign, he ridiculed his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, when some of her aides invoked the Fifth Amendment during a congressional investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server.

“The mob takes the Fifth,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa in September 2016. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

After his interview, Mr. Giuliani met with Mr. Trump at his golf club in Northern Virginia.

Mr. Giuliani told the ABC anchor, George Stephanopoulos, that he was still getting up to speed on Mr. Trump’s legal issues — a fact that became apparent as the interview went on. As was the case during his interviews last week, Mr. Giuliani seemed to speak largely off the cuff. He speculated freely and contradicted himself, sometimes from one statement to the next.

He said, for example, that Mr. Mueller would be to blame if Mr. Trump refused to testify because his office had leaked a list of questions that the special counsel would like to ask him. But then he admitted he did not know who leaked the questions, which were reported by The New York Times.

Mr. Giuliani referred repeatedly to a federal judge’s criticism of the special counsel’s fraud case against Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign. The judge, T.S. Ellis III, said on Friday that the case seemed motivated by a desire to get Mr. Manafort to potentially incriminate Mr. Trump.

“There’s no question that the amount of government misconduct is accumulating,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Very embarrassing to my former Justice Department.”

Mr. Giuliani created a furor on Wednesday when he contradicted the president about the payment to Ms. Clifford. Speaking on Fox News, Mr. Giuliani said Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen for a $130,000 payment that Mr. Cohen has said he made to Ms. Clifford, to keep her from making public a story about an affair she claims she had with Mr. Trump — a claim that he denies. When asked in April by reporters traveling on Air Force One whether he knew about the payment, Mr. Trump said he did not.

On Sunday, Mr. Giuliani said he was still trying to establish when Mr. Trump learned that Mr. Cohen had paid Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. But he added that as a legal matter, it did not matter since the payment did not violate federal campaign finance rules.

Asked about the discrepancies between his account and the president’s statement, Mr. Giuliani said: “Those don’t amount to anything — what is said to the press. That’s political.”

Mr. Giuliani did not shed much new light on the nature of the payments themselves. He said Mr. Cohen “made payments for the president, or he conducted business for president, which means he had legal fees, moneys laid out and expenditures.” But he characterized the sum Ms. Clifford received as a “nuisance” payment.

Mr. Giuliani accused Ms. Clifford of trying to make as much money as possible from her notoriety, noting that she made a cameo appearance during the opening skit on “Saturday Night Live.”

Mr. Giuliani’s admission on Wednesday caught Mr. Trump’s staff off guard and prompted Mr. Trump to try to clarify the nature of payments he made to Mr. Cohen. The morning after Mr. Giuliani’s comments, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Mr. Cohen “received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA.”

A day later, he told reporters gathered outside the White House that Mr. Giuliani did not know the particulars of the case, even after Mr. Giuliani told The Times on Wednesday night that he had spoken with the president before and after his interview on Fox News, and that Mr. Trump and other lawyers on the team were aware of what he would say.

Some of Mr. Trump’s legal and political advisers believe Mr. Giuliani’s comments could put the president in legal jeopardy, since federal officials are required to report liabilities of more than $10,000 during the preceding year. Mr. Trump’s last disclosure, which he signed last June, does not mention any debt to Mr. Cohen.

On Sunday, Mr. Giuliani tried to clarify what Mr. Trump called a “retainer.”

“The retainer agreement was to repay expenses, which turns out to have included this one,” Mr. Giuliani said.

Appearing after Mr. Giuliani on the same program, Ms. Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, called Mr. Giuliani’s interview an “absolute unmitigated disaster” and “one of the worst TV appearances by any attorney on behalf of a client in modern times.”

“He now expects the American people to believe that he doesn’t really know the facts,” Mr. Avenatti added. “I think it is obvious to the American people that this is a cover-up, that they are making it up as they go along.”